I was never meant to be a SAHM.

 True confession: I was NEVER meant to stay at home with my kids. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my kids, and I think they’re beautiful and amazing, and I LOVE spending time with them. But not ALL day, EVERY day. No weekends, no breaks, just kids hanging on me, all day. I am NOT cut out for that. I stayed home with both of my kids until they were 6 months old, and I was totally bonkers and out of my mind by then, both times. I was so ready for adult interactions, a little space and freedom, and time to unwind. With both kids, I ended up staying home with them again as toddlers.

Kasin was probably 1 the second time I ended up at home with him, and I stayed home until he was 16 months old. I enjoyed it a lot more when he was older, but it was a stressful time, because I needed a job and had just lost one. He was a really sweet toddler, and he was easy to be around, and fun to play with, and he always wanted to go outside and get dirty and be crazy, but he was so fun. He didn’t really talk much, and he was just so sweet. We would walk to the park practically every day and run around like lunatics. He was a great listener, a very good toddler! But even though I enjoyed him so much, I wanted to be around other adults and have conversations with people again. I didn’t have any money for activities or play groups, and I was shy and awkward around other parents on the playground. We lived in a low-income neighborhood, and the other families around us were sometimes intimidating. Our neighbors in our 4plex were confirmed drug dealers. Tough times.

Staying home with Milo, I live in a great neighborhood, I have a little bit more money to work with (albeit, not much.) and we know lots of other parents with kids that are around Milo’s age, so we have lots of friends to meet up with and play at the park, we go to the store and he helps me choose fruit, he finds crackers for me on the shelves and puts things in the cart. It’s exhausting. He runs around like a lunatic, he shouts at people and talks to strangers, he bails out on me and runs in the opposite direction of where I’m trying to get him to go. He has epic melt downs if I don’t do what he tells me to, if I don’t give in and let him go the opposite direction and run away, if I make him sit in the cart, if I don’t chase him when he’s running and laughing, just… all the time. He is not a nice toddler. He’s a mess. I love him to death, and he’s completely adorable, and SO SMART, but he’s just naughty. I try to be consistent, but Ross is not, no matter how much I tell him he needs to be. 

I know he’s 2, and I wasn’t at home with Kasin when he was 2, but I really think Kasin was a much easier toddler… maybe I don’t remember it correctly? I remember moments where he say, peed on my couch, drew with permanent marker all over a friend’s parent’s leather love seat, wrote on a satin pillow case with dry erase marker while I was sleeping, and so on… but Milo is a complete monster. And I love him, I DO! I love him to PIECES. He amazes me endlessly with how smart he is, how clever, how quickly he catches onto things, how ingenuitive he is. He just does NOT listen, ever. He doesn’t do a single thing I ask him to, and he thinks it’s hilarious. He runs away from me when I tell him to come here, and it’s soooo exhausting. I have to count to 3 a million times a day, I have to put him in the corner a dozen or two dozen times a day, and I have to pick him up and carry him (all 31 incredibly hard-on-my-back ounds of him) FAR more often than I’d like, because he simply won’t do what I’m asking. 

Long story short, whether my kids are angels or monsters, I am not cut out to be a stay at home mom. I get worn out on it. I get tired of being at home, I get tired of chasing Milo, I get tired of having to keep the whole house on lock down during nap time (Milo’s room doesn’t have a door) and I get bored. I hate not making any money and contributing to my household, I hate not being able to super-mom it up and enroll my kids in all kinds of programs and lessons, I wish I could be that person with that kind of income who can just make it all happen. I can’t stand having people ask me for stuff all day, every day. I don’t like to be climbed all over like a jungle gym, I don’t like it when I’m completely exhausted from one of the kids being sick and waking up a lot of times the night before, coughing and what have you, and then still have to get up and be Super Mom all day the next day. 

Here’s another confession. I hate doing house work. I HATE washing dishes. I hate sweeping, I especially hate mopping. I hate doing laundry, I hate forgetting about the laundry and then having to run the washer a second time because things start to smell mildewy or funky. I hate it! I hate cleaning the bathroom just to have Ross shave his head in there and Milo pee all over the side of the toilet and Kasin leave toothpaste all over the sink basin, and just the wreckage that is a single day in my house. You should see my kitchen. I’m betting half of you wouldn’t eat in my kitchen. Ahahaha. I swear it’s clean, it’s just cluttered, honest to goodness. 

I feel like a horrible person for saying these things. I hate when I complain about Milo. I hate that he knows he’s naughty, because EVERYONE says it to him, ALL THE TIME, and he will tell HIMSELF, "Milo NAUGHTY!" because he hears it so often. I seriously love Milo to shreds, and I wanted him SO badly, I wanted a second baby SO much, and now he’s here, and he’s a hurricane. A delightful little hurricane that pushes my buttons in all the wrong ways, and makes me pull my hair out… but I wouldn’t change it. He’s a challenging child, and sometimes I wish that he was easier, but I love him just the same, just as much as I could if he were a perfect angel baby. Just as much as I would if he’d been a girl, even if he’d been a completely angelic little girl. I could never replace him, and I’m grateful for all the things he’s taught me, how he’s forced me to re-write my beliefs on parenting, how he showed me what it’s like for other people I have judged in the past. (How hard is it to control your child?? How can she let him do that??) He made me realize that I was one of those hateful judging parents I always thought I hated. I WAS that person! Not anymore. Not anymore. You want to push your kid in a stroller until she’s 7 years old? Fine. Your kid insists on sitting forward-facing and not backwards, even though she’s 11 months old? Alright. Your choice. Your child. Your life. Not mine. I don’t know your story, you don’t know mine. 

This kind of went all over the place, didn’t it? I just feel like I need a personal purpose, I need something to do outside of my house, outside of my family. I feel like I enjoy being with my family more when I am NOT with them all the time. I get tired of going through the motions every day. Sometimes I just want to celebrate a free day with my kids… not dread it, because it’s the same thing that I do every day, and I know that it’s going to be exhausting and that Milo is going to make me crazy a million times. It’s so much easier to deal with when it’s not constant. 

Do me a favor, if you’re thinking about saying ANYTHING AT ALL negative, just don’t. If you have ANYTHING to say that isn’t polite, helpful, encouraging, or otherwise NICE, don’t do it. Don’t leave me a note saying it’s unacceptable for an 11 month old baby to sit forward-facing in a carseat no matter what. Don’t tell me that it’s horrible that Milo calls himself naughty. Don’t tell me that I need to whip Ross into shape about being consistent with discipline. Just don’t say anything at all, if you can’t say anything nice.

I know I’m asking for it, though. I don’t even know why I’m posting this. Probably because I spent so much time writing it, and I’m pretty sure no one will read it, anyways. 
~me